Wednesday, September 15, 2004

How Bad is it?

Kos, via a CBS News Report using Pentagon reports:

More than 200 U.S. troops were wounded in Iraq in the past week, the Pentagon said Tuesday, and the total since the invasion was launched in March 2003 is now 7,245.

Of the 219 wounded in the past week, 81 were returned to duty; the 138 others were not.

The Pentagon generally reports its wounded totals each week. Fatality totals are updated daily.

The number of Americans killed and wounded has grown rapidly amid an intensifying and increasingly effective insurgency. There were more wounded over the past five months -- about 4,000 -- than in the first 13 months of the war, when there were about 3,300, according to Pentagon reports.


Kos is exactly right when he adds,

Body armor is the only thing keeping Iraq from producing Vietnam-type KIA figures. As Newsweek noted, this is Phase II of the insurgency. Phase I, recruitment, is finished. Now the insurgents are out for blood (to the tune of over 70 attacks every day).

Weve lost this war. We've literally lost entire swaths of Iraqi territory to the insurgents. We've empowered Al Qaida and Islamist militants with new recruits and pictures of prison torture and rape to fuel their cause. We''ve stretched our military thin, hurt recruitment, made it impossible to respond to actual threats.

In short, this is the biggest political and military blunder this country has faced since -- I'll let the historians decide when. But as things are going, this is going to have worse repercussions for our nation than Vietnam ever did.


Now, go down a couple of posts and look at those questions for undecideds again.

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